Marine Current & Tidal Energy

Tidal Barrages Assignment

3rd Assignment

Author
Beatriz M. F. Corceiro
90645 MEGE

Professor: João C. Henriques

2nd Semester 2020/2021
Contents
1 Motivation 1

2 Results 1

3 Main conclusions 3
 Tidal Barrages Assignment

1 Motivation
This assignment consists of setting the parameters of the power plant, with the aim of maximizing
the Power extracted and the Capacity Factor (CF). This two objectives, usually, conflict with each
other. For example, there are some measures that can be adopted to increase the power, but can
lead to a CF drop, which is not desired and vice versa. As a result, I will do my best efforts in
order to establish the best possible balance between the Power generated by the site and the CF
obtained. To do so, I will try to study, separately, the influence of each configuration parameter.
Notice that the values in the tables referred to power are expressed in MW units and the turbine
diameter in meters.

2 Results
The initial values for the given parameters in the Python code were not compatible with the
data that was given to me, shown in appendix 1. Therefore, I had to increase the Pgen_rated value.
I changed for 29MW instead of 25 MW and the code run normally. Then, I tried different values
for this parameter, while keeping all the remaining constants. In appendix 2, is shown clearly the
values I used initially.

rated
Pgen 29 30 31 32
P_turb 107.00 107.00 107.00 107.00
P_electrical 102.01 101.99 101.97 101.94
C_F 0.15 0.14 0.14 0.13
max P_turb(t) 28.45 28.45 28.45 28.45

Table 1: Power and CP for different Pgen_rated values

Table 1 shows that by increasing the Pgen_rated value, the CF tends to decrease. Therefore,
by keeping the remaining variables constant, the optimal value for the Pgen_rated is 29 MW, the
minimum admissible. Notice that
T otal energy converted in one year
CF = rated × 8760
(2.1)
Pgen

where 8760 represents the total number of hours in a year. Of course there is a minimum Pgen_rated
for the energy to be converted, but if the Pgen_rated is too high, as shown in the expression (2.1),
the CF value will be lower. As a result, in the next scenarios I show below, I will always use the
minimum Pgen_rated allowed.
Now, I will change both the turbines diameter and the number of turbines and see what happen
to the power and CF values.

1
 Tidal Barrages Assignment

rated
Pgen 29 29 30 29 31 38 38
Number of turbines 30 24 23 25 24 24 19
Turbine Diameter 5 6 6 6 7 8 8
P_turb 108.28 107.00 105.82 108.04 101.52 88.82 92.83
P_electrical 102.90 102.01 100.87 102.99 96.80 84.57 88.52
C_F 0.12 0.15 0.15 0.14 0.13 0.09 0.12
max P_turb(t) 19.81 28.45 29.04 27.91 30.31 37.18 37.18

Table 2: Power and CP for different number of turbines and turbines diameter

Table 2 allows us to see that having turbines with larger diameters, implies having a larger
Pgen_rated. Additionally, the larger the diameter, the higher the power extracted per turbine.
This goes in the same direction as the expressions learnt in the classes, for instance, for a constant
power coefficient (CP), we can notice that the larger the A, which is proportional to the square of
the diameter, the larger the power extracted and therefore a larger Pgen_rated is required.

P = CP × 1/2 × ρ × U 3 × A (2.2)

In expression (2.2), U is the fluid velocity and A is the turbine’s rotor area. Nonetheless, for
turbine diameters larger than 6 meters, the power extracted starts to decrease, as well as the CF.
It was also possible to conclude that for a certain diameter, the more the turbines, the higher
the power extracted, but the lower the CF. Therefore, it is not worth to increase the turbines
diameter. Therefore, for the following simulations, let‘s keep the 24 6 meters-diameter turbines,
with a Pgen_rated equal to 29 MW.
Now, keeping the optimum values for the turbine diameter and number of turbines, I will look
for the most favorable values for the number of gates, as well as their respective area.

rated
Pgen 29 30 30 31 31 31
Number of gates 6 6 7 8 11 20
Area of gates 10 × 15 12 × 18 12 × 18 12 × 18 12 × 18 12 × 18
P_turb 107.00 114.37 116.86 118.55 121.11 121.74
P_electrical 102.01 109.02 111.39 113.00 115.45 116.04
C_F 0.15 0.15 0.15 0.15 0.16 0.16
max P_turb(t) 28.45 29.66 30.08 30.39 30.78 30.97

Table 3: Power and CP for different Number of gates and area of gates

By analysing table 3, it is possible to see that the extracted power increases, if the gates’
area goes from 10 × 15 to 12 ∗ 18. Therefore, I decided to adopt this new area for the remaining
computations, also because I think that in real life, it is a reasonable value for the gates’ area.
Then, I could understand that by increasing the number of gates, up to a certain value, the power
extracted increases, as well. This makes sense, because if the number of gates increases a lot (20,
for example), the flow passes too fast to the blades that the gross head of the site decreases, which
is not desirable. It is possible to see that for a number of gates equal to 11, the CF increases to

2
 Tidal Barrages Assignment

0.16, which is very positive, given this site characteristics expressed in the appendix plots. For an
increasing from 11 to 20 gates, however, the increasing in extracted power and CF is neglectful,
therefore it is not worth to have more than 11 gates. In the end, it is necessary to slightly increase
the Pgen_rated, increase the area of the gates and considerable increase the number of gates, to
have an increase in the power extraction and CF.
Subsequently, it is time to deal with the turbine starting head (Hstart), while considering
Pgen_rated equal to 31 MW and 11 12 × 18 square meters gates.

rated
Pgen 31 33 35 32
H_start 5 6 7 5.5
P_turb 121.11 125.25 125.3 122.55
P_electrical 115.45 119.42 119.49 116.86
C_F 0.16 0.15 0.14 0.15
max P_turb(t) 30.78 32.51 34.2 31.66

Table 4: Power and CP for different turbine starting heads

Table 4 allows us to conclude that if the turbine starting head is equal to 6 meters instead of 5,
the extracted power is higher, but the CF decreases. The same happens for the difference of having
a starting head of 7 meters instead of 6, but in that case, the power increasing is too low, compared
to the CF drop. As a result, I came across a trade-off between the 5 and the 6 meters starting
head. Therefore, I decided to look for what would happen if the Hsart was equal to 5.5 meters, the
intermediate situation. But this new scenario "loses" for the 6 meters Hstart, given that for a same
CF, the extracted power is lower.

3 Main conclusions
As initially expected, both power extracted and CF depend on the configuration parameters,
described previously. Having performed all the simulations showed in chapter 2, two scenarios were
elected. Notice that the maximum CF obtained was 0.16, which is considered to be a low value.
However, Figure 7, on the appendix, illustrates that, in this site, the tide level reaches very low
values, which leads to having considerably large periods in which energy convertion does not occur,
which leads to a CF drop.
The difference between the two elected scenarios are the inputs turbine starting head and
Pgen_rated and output values of the extracted power and CF. There is more power extracted
and a lower CF for the case in which the turbine starting head is higher. Of course it is not good to
have a decrease in the CF value, but we should keep in mind that the main goal is to extract power.
However, having a 6 meters starting head is very likely to imply higher investment and perhaps
maintenance costs to operate this site. Even though such matters are not taken into account in
this assignment, in my view, an engineer should always care about it. so if there were conditions to
construct a site with a starting head equal to 6 meters instead of 5, I would recommend Tidal Green
Power to compute the Net Present Value of both scenarios, considering all the costs and estimated
duration of the project and then choose the one with the highest value on this economic indicator.
It is important not to forget that topographical and environmental conditions and impacts should
also be considered before implementing such a project and setting the configuration parameters.

3
Appendix

Figure 1: Given data

Figure 2: Plot 1

Figure 3: Plot 2

Figure 4: Plot 3
Figure 5: Plot 4

Figure 6: Plot 5